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Baby, I'm So, So Sorry!

We fall back in love with Lara in Tomb Raider Trilogy.

Author: Aram Lecis

Published: August 4, 2011

Those of you keeping track at home will remember that Lara won my heart back in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. after having spurned her advances over the last 15 years. Yeah, I loved her and her short shorts like no one else way back in 1996 (what red-blooded teenager didn't stare at this cover and… well… you know) and the original Tomb Raider was pretty impressive at the time. I never was able to get into the series after that though, and as the reviews for the sequels got worse and worse, I forgot about Lara entirely.

Somewhere along the line, things changed. The original team at Core dissolved, and the legendary Crystal Dynamics took over the franchise reigns. Crystal D, which had been a bit of a dormant juggernaut (they simply owned the 3DO with titles like Gex, the definitive Star Control 2 port [still used today in the Ur-Quan Masters sourceforge project], underrated early RTS The Horde and both Total Eclipse and Solar Eclipse) who hadn't done much since the excellent Legacy of Kain series. The kids at Crystal Dynamics, unbeknownst to me, had breathed new life into Lara.

So when our own over-extended EIC Sam Bishop asked me if I would (belatedly) review the Tomb Raider Trilogy collection, I jumped at the chance. Consisting of the three Tomb Raider games Crystal D had developed (Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld), this package is chock full of damn fine Tomb Raiding. For a bit more in-depth look at a couple of these games, check out Sam's excellent reviews of Legend and Anniversary (Sam… what happened to the Underworld review?) where he really gives them the old Sam Bishop treatment. As part of the HD Classics collection, the first two games which were originally PS2 offerings get spiffed up to a higher resolution and include a few control tweaks, along with fantastic trophy support. Those two games plus the PS3 version of Underworld clock in at a round a dozen hours each, meaning you will get an awful lot of Lara. But as I found out, that isn't really a bad thing anymore.